page_title: Eddie Gallagher (Navy SEAL)
section_title: Criminal allegations
hierarchical_section_title: Eddie Gallagher (Navy SEAL) / Criminal allegations
caption_attribution_description: English: This photo, recovered from Eddie Gallagher’s phone, shows Chief Gallagher and other US Navy SEALs posing with the corpse of an Islamic State fighter. Gallagher is center, wearing a baseball cap and holding the captive's hair.
context_page_description: Edward R. Gallagher is a former United States Navy SEAL who came to national attention in the United States after he was charged in September 2018 with ten offenses under the Uniform Code of Military Justice over accusations that he had stabbed to death an injured, sedated 17-year-old ISIS prisoner, photographing himself holding the head of the corpse by the hair and sending the photo to friends. He was also accused by fellow Navy SEAL snipers of randomly shooting two Iraqi civilians: a girl walking with her friends on a riverbank; and an unarmed elderly man. During the trial, President Donald Trump ordered Gallagher moved from pretrial confinement to house arrest.
  Gallagher was acquitted on all but one of the charges he faced on July 2, 2019. He was found guilty of posing for a photograph with the teenager's corpse in violation of Uniform Code of Military Justice article 134, "General article". Gallagher was sentenced to demotion and four months of confinement, which resulted in him being released for time served during pretrial confinement.
context_section_description: Gallagher was accused of multiple offenses during his final deployment to Iraq and during the Battle for Mosul.  The most prominent accusation and the best-attested to was the murder of a prisoner of war, a war crime.  A captured young fighter of the Islamic State (also known as ISIL, ISIS, and Daesh) was being treated by a medic.  According to two SEAL witnesses, Gallagher said over the radio "he's mine" and walked up to the medic and prisoner, and without saying a word killed the prisoner by stabbing him repeatedly with his hunting knife. Gallagher and his commanding officer, Lieutenant Jake Portier, then posed for photographs of them standing over the body with some other nearby SEALs.  Gallagher then text messaged a friend in California a picture himself holding the dead captive's head by the hair with the explanation "Good story behind this, got him with my hunting knife.”
  Another accusation was that Gallagher's sniper work during his 2017 deployment became indiscriminate, reckless, and bloodthirsty.  He allegedly fired his rifle far more frequently than other snipers; according to testimony, the other snipers in the platoon did not consider him a good sniper, and he took "random shots" into buildings.  Other snipers said they witnessed Gallagher taking at least two militarily pointless shots, shooting and killing an unarmed old man in a white robe as well as a young girl walking with other girls.  Gallagher allegedly boasted about the large number of people he had killed, claiming he averaged three kills a day over 80 days, including four women.  Gallagher also was reportedly known for indiscriminately spraying neighborhoods with rockets and machine gun fire with no known enemy force in the region.
  A charge of obstruction of justice was brought against Gallagher for alleged witness intimidation.  According to the claim, Gallagher allegedly threatened to kill fellow SEALs if they reported his actions.  The Navy cited his text messages as attempting to undermine the investigation, with messages sent to "pass the word on those traitors", meaning cooperating witnesses, and to get them blacklisted within the special warfare community.  This resulted in him being confined in the brig for a time with heavy restrictions on his ability to communicate, although this confinement was later lessened.
  Gallagher was also charged with nearly a dozen lesser offenses.  Some of these charges, such as flying a drone over a corpse, were dismissed during preliminary hearings.
  According to the original Navy prosecutor Chris Czaplak, "Chief Gallagher decided to act like the monster the terrorists accuse us of being.  He handed ISIS propaganda manna from heaven.  His actions are everything ISIS says we are."
caption: Gallagher is center, wearing a baseball cap and holding the corpse's hair.
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